Two

Two days and some change left until NaNoWriMo kicks off.

Remember last Wednesday when I mentioned not knowing a whole lot about the plot?  I know only slightly more now.  I was off the last five days but spent most of that time hanging with my lovely girlfriend.  Time well spent but not all that useful for novelling purposes.  I did figure out how I'm going to work the time travel a bit more, if that counts for anything.

One concept I know I'm going to use is that frequent time travelers adopt aliases so that their enemies can't easily travel back in time and stop them from being born.  In a way, it's similar to how wizards don't reveal their true names in fantasy stories.  I wish I could claim full credit for the concept but I nicked it from the DC comics character Rip Hunter, Timemaster.

I'm a little uneasy about the particulars of the plot but I'm pretty sure I'll find the way once I start writing.

Seven More Days

Seven more days until NaNoWriMo.  How prepared am I?  Not as prepared as I would like to be.  It seems I've focused more on my main character's back story than the actual plot.  I've got the plot broadly figure out but the devil is in the details, as they say. 

Since the main characters travel to five or six points in time, I'm thinking about structuring the plot like it's five or six Doctor Who episodes, complete with titles and different menaces in each.

It's always amazing how things evolve in the planning process.  Tommy Anomaly was conceived as a Doctor Who knockoff and has grown into a combination of Doctor Who, Captain Jack Harkness, and Han Solo.  I'm a lot more excited about the character than when I started planning and think I have a pretty good handle on him.

In non-writing news, the tidal wave of free books I was hoping for after the Forbes article about Goodreads has yet to reach the land.

Guess who got mentioned in Forbes?

Me.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/10/16/goodreads-ceo-these-top-25-book-reviewers-represent-the-future-infographic/

16 Days Left

Wow.  Before you know it, we'll be down to single digits.  After that, we'll be counting words.  After that comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, death, etc.

Concepts are coming together in what I'm still calling Chronomaly.  I've got a much better handle on my lead character's look and personality, due in part to me watching quite a few episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood over the weekend.  The plot and supporting cast still needs work but that's what the next two weeks are for.  I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about the steampunky 1920's timeline where Tommy originates from so I figure I'll have to have my characters visit it for some reason.

One notion I'm going to play with in the story is that events in one timeline have echoes in the others.  For instance, the invasion from H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds really happened in Tommy's timeline and contributed to his world's advancement, something the Wells in our reality subconsciously sensed and wrote about.

Another concept I'm going to explore is the Doctor Who/Peter Pan connection I mentioned a few weeks ago.  I think Tommy's ruined more than a few people's lives by taking them adventuring in the timestream, not to mention some things he did he's not too proud of when he first got access to time travel technology.

The tweaked teaser

So now I'm currently calling my NaNoWriMo book Chronomaly.  Here's the revised teaser:

Chronal explorer Tommy Anomaly travels to the 21st century to investigate a temporal disturbance, only to have a man steal his time gauntlet and go back in time to prevent his own marriage.  With help from the man's perturbed wife, Tommy gets a replacement gauntlet and goes into the timestream to find him.  But their temporal journeys have made sinister beings aware of Earth.  Can Tommy get his time gauntlet back, defeat invaders from other realities, and save a marriage?

Twenty-Two Days Left

Twenty-Two Days Left.  Here's my NaNoWriMo To-Do List:

• Pick jobs for my married couple and a plausible reason for them to fight on their anniversary.  I decided I wanted them to be one of those nauseating couples with names that go together so they are Wesley and Jessica, aka Wes and Jess.  I'm excited about making bad things to happen to them.
• Come up with names for other time travelers for Tommy Anomaly to throw around.  "That Ross Uroborus is such a pompous ass!"
• Figure out what the hell is actually going to happen.  I know Tommy and Jess will initially be tracking Wes down using some photographs from key events in their lives that they've spotted him in the background in and that the Gruul will be a thorn in their side the entire way. 
• I want to throw a third group of characters in the mix but I'm not sure yet.  I already know Tommy is part of the Uroborus League, a group of "non-interfering" time travelers.  Maybe I'll come up with some kind of steampunky robots that police the time stream.
• If I enjoy the experience of writing Stolen Time (still not crazy about the title), future adventures will involve dinosaurs being set loose in a sleepy midwestern town and time traveling robots from an alternate past. 

Other (Doctor Who) stuff :

• The first series of Doctor Who was the deal of the day on the WB website yesterday.  I'm never going to be finished watching Doctor Who.
• Read Shada over the last couple days.  It's a novel based on some unfilmed Doctor Who scripts by Douglas Adams.  It was awesome so I'll be watching the Tom Baker Doctor Who's after I watch all the modern ones and Torchwood
• I really like Torchwood.  I'm alternating Torchwood seasons with David Tennant Doctor Who seasons. 

27 more days

Here's the teaser for what is still being called Stolen Time:
Chrononaut Tommy Anomaly travels to the 21st century to investigate a temporal disturbance, only to have a man steal his time gauntlet and go back in time to prevent his own marriage.  With help from the man's perturbed wife, Tommy gets a replacement gauntlet and goes into the timestream to find him.  But their temporal journeys have made something sinister aware of Earth.  Can Tommy get his time gauntlet back, defeat some owl creatures from several universes over, and save a marriage?

28 more days

Twenty-Eight more days until the insanity starts and I become a hermit.  More of a hermit, I mean.

Things are slowly coming together for me.  I'm watching a ton of Doctor Who and Torchwood to get into the mood and keep me there.  I'm also reading all humorous SF and fantasy books this month.  By the time November 1 hits, I should be much more prepared than I am now.

As I've mentioned before, it's a time travel story.  I'm going for a Doctor Who written by P.G. Wodehouse feel.  Right now, I'm calling it Stolen Time but I'm not thrilled with the title.  I need to come up with better names and occupations for the married couple and flesh out the aliens' motives.  I'll also be coming up with a lot of throwaway references to my main character's past adventures.  I've got a lot of sf and fantasy fragments I plan on mining for material.

My Subterranean Expedition

I got my Subterranean Press Grab Bag yesterday.  I'm pretty happy with it despite already owning two of the books.  Here's what I got:

1. Act of Love by Joe Lansdale
2. In Waders from Mars by assorted Lansdale family members
3. 69 Barrow Street by Lawrence Block
4. Judge Sn Goes Golfing by John Scalzi
5. Blue and Gold by K.J. Parker
6. Gods of Opar by Philip Jose Farmer
7. The Providence Rider by Robert McCammon
8. The Inheritance by Robin Hobb
9. Winter's Dreams by Glen Cook
10. The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard
11. Indignities of the Flesh by Bentley Little
12. Stephen King Goes to the Movies by Stephen King
13. The Door Gunner by Michael Bishop

I'm particularly excited by Judge Sn and In Waders from Mars.

In other books news, I'm on an Angry Robot kick.  The Corpse-Rat King was excellent and Seven Wonders is shaping up to be nearly as good.

Leading up to NaNoWriMo, the current reading plan is to read all of the light-hearted books I have in rapid succession to stay in the right mood.  Once NaNo kicks off, I'll probably be reading short story collections in my off time.

Some News Items

• I need a title for my Doctor Who-ish time travel story I've mentioned several times in the past.  The title was Ask Me Again Yesterday when I originally conceived it but it's mutated quite a bit since then.  Owl Men from the Next Universe Over doesn't really cut it.  I've devoted quite a bit of brain power to it the last few days and the story is coming together.  I'll be ready when November 1 hits.
• The Skatelites are coming to town later this month.  Since they haven't been to St. Louis since last century and this will likely be the last time they come though, I have scheduled the following day off.
• The post office continues to jerk me around.  I got up early two Saturdays ago to retrieve a package during their odd weekend hours only to find out they were mistaken.  Today, I got on Amazon to check the progress of the Doctor Who and Torchwood DVDs I ordered only to find they were sitting at the post office since last Thursday.  Grrr.
• Just like last year when I was already drowning in unread books, I ordered the Subterranean Press grab bag.  I'm hoping for some Joe Lansdale and John Scalzi.
• It's not quite time to start taking every Friday off but it's drawing near.